


Promised Me Heaven

by aldiara



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Bring Back The Porn Challenge, Comfort/Angst, F/F, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 17:17:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15868152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldiara/pseuds/aldiara
Summary: There was a melody inside her soul that had always rung to the tune of Margaret Wells’s face, and now the song of it drowned out all caution.





	Promised Me Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scene, post S02E07 (thank you for totally destroying me, Show!). If you're not familiar with Harlots, this contains references to underage/forced prostitution and sexual abuse (not between main pairing). Also, loss of a loved one, grief/mourning. Basically sad smut.
> 
> Huge thanks to Alsha for beta-ing!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After they’ve read the proclamation – after she’s done soothing the girls, handing out brisk words of comfort where there’s no comfort to be had; after she’s hugged Charlotte and Jacob and clasped hands with Will – after there is nothing else practical to do, Nancy walks home. She keeps her spine upright with the discipline of years but with each slow, measured step, her birch stick bends to the point of almost breaking.

She doesn’t let it break. She’s Nancy Birch. This stick is her, self-made, and there’s no way she’ll let it give before Covent Garden’s merciless eyes.

She walks home. She fends off questions in the street. She closes her door behind her, takes a deep breath, takes off her hat. She climbs the stairs.

She doesn’t think she can undo her stays without falling apart. She lets the birch stick clatter to the ground. She drops on her back on the bed, coat, breeches, boots, and all. She closes her eyes, and simply breathes.

***

She was the first that made Margaret Wells spend, or at least she was as far as honesty among whores will tell it. She has hoarded the treasure of that memory her whole life.

They were both of them fifteen, already with years of Lydia Quigley’s trade behind them. Nancy was started early, after one of Lydia’s routine inspections of the younger girls. She’d made a face and sighed and proclaimed, “There’s no use waiting, dear, that face won’t be improved by years. If we’re lucky, you’ll get a few years as a molly boy. Their culls don’t look much for a pretty face, so we might as well put that arse to work while it’s still fresh and peachy.”

She cut off Nancy’s hair, stuffed her in boys’ clothes, and sent her to the back room, and the less said about the years that followed the better.

Margaret was lucky, or what passed for luck back then. With that rich auburn hair, skin like rich cream and blue-velvet eyes, she was allowed to wait till twelve, and Lydia made a right show of it, an auction of an unspoiled quim, a rare thing even in those days. Nancy watched from the shadows, and did not notice until after that she’d bitten the insides of her cheeks to painful ribbons. She lay on her narrow cot that night, savouring the taste of blood while Maggie sobbed and pleaded upstairs, promising herself that one day she would make _them_ bleed.

Years passed, and they waited. In the grey-black, quiet hours before dawn, they’d huddle together under the staircase, sharing stolen treats, the occasional swig of gin, and promises of vengeance.

“I’ll kill her,” Margaret would grate out, her eyes the colour of the blue flame at the heart of their filched candle. “I’ll do it now. I’ll get a knife from the kitchen and go upstairs, I’ll gut her like a pig. I’ll stuff my hands into her and see if there’s a heart in there, and if there is, I’ll roast it for the devil’s luncheon.”

“Wait,” Nancy cautioned, threading her fingers through her friend’s. “We’ll do it properly, like we said. Without the law on our heels. Another year and we’ll have enough money tucked away to leave.”

Margaret half sighed, half growled. “I can’t stand this for another year, Nance. I can’t!”

“You daft cow,” murmured Nancy, brushing the hair back from Margaret’s face. “If I can stand it, so can you.”

She was too old by then to pass for a boy. Lydia had promoted her to “Nancy, our hole-of-all-trades – don’t mind the face, gentlemen, she is well skilled in other ways. Just close your eyes, and let her work her magic.”

She read the realisation in Maggie’s eyes; the anguish too, and the contrition. She wanted none of it. When Maggie opened her mouth to say sorry, Nancy put forth her own to stop the words.

Maggie’s mouth was soft, and yielded sweetly to the kiss: their first one. She tasted of stewed apples and a richer, deeper flavour Nancy could not place. She did not protest when Nancy put her hands on her shoulders, and Nancy did not dare to stop and wonder what she was doing. She could hear her own blood rushing in her ears, a slow and unstoppable roar, a waterfall. There was a melody inside her soul that had always rung to the tune of Margaret Wells’s face, and now the song of it drowned out all caution.

She unlaced Maggie’s stays, slowly and steadily, kissing all the while. Margaret’s hands came up to rest softly on her wrists, and for a moment Nancy froze. But Maggie did not stop her. She merely ran her hands along the knobs and bones of Nancy’s hands, across the paper-thin skin on the inside of her wrists, so gently, as if she could read the quivering tension waiting there, and wanted only to reassure it. Nancy shivered, her fingers growing clumsy. When the stays finally came off, she broke away abruptly, startled irreverently into laughter. “Christ. Where did _those_ come from?”

Maggie laughed too, leaning back and looking down at her own chest. “I know. I still ain’t used to them. I think they popped out overnight.”

“I’ll say,” Nancy murmured, then, her heart racing, cupped her hands around Maggie’s creamy-white breasts. Her nipples looked like raspberries, firming against Nancy’s calloused fingers. Nancy had never tasted raspberries. She leaned forward and took one in her mouth, circling it with her tongue. She learned the flavour of it, sweet-pebbled, throbbing and alive. Maggie made a small, throaty noise of surprise and arched her back. Against all expectation, Nancy felt heat ignite between her tight-clenched thighs.

***

To her culls, the whip is a harsh mistress, flaying the sin from them even as it has them shuddering in bloodied, shameful climax: satisfaction and atonement, all neatly wrapped up in those nine smooth leather tails.

To Nancy, it’s a friend and ally. It rests now on her undone shirt, the nine tails brushing softly against her bare skin. They touch skin that no one else has been allowed to touch in years. They curl around her bare, small breasts. They raise her nipples to hard, aching attention. Slowly, she reaches to unlace her breeches, pushing down the flap – no more, just exposing the very bare necessities. Slowly, she slides the smooth leather grip between her thighs. Slowly, she starts to move.

***

Maggie’s breasts against her face were the smoothest, warmest thing she’d ever felt. They were heavy and taut in her caressing hands, the nipples hard and puckered against her tongue. She tasted salty and sweet all at once, and Nancy licked and sucked her, marking that cream-white skin. Above her, Maggie was making soft, urgent noises, half cursing and half pleading. Her head dropped back against the haphazardly stacked crates below the stairs, her long neck bared as she thrust her breasts forward, into Nancy’s hands, her mouth.

“Christ, Nancy – please…” Her hips were thrusting too, and Nancy fumbled one hand under her skirts, past her silk stockings, against the shock of her warm bare thigh. Her petticoats were wet, and Nancy traced the soaked fabric against the soft heat beneath, gathering it between Maggie’s thighs and sliding it gently back and forth, applying pressure through it with her thumb.

Maggie cursed again, breathlessly, and slid a hand down to weave her fingers between Nancy’s. Nancy let her press her own fingers closer, through the slit in the petticoats and into sudden, slippery-wet heat. Looking up, she met Maggie’s eyes. Diluted pupils, wild dark blue. She was wet-slick-loose, wide open to Nancy’s touch. Her hips were moving, pushing up in instinctive rhythm. The swollen bud at the top of her quim throbbed under Nancy’s fingers. Her breasts were bouncing with her motions, and Nancy brought her face close again, to feel the heaving weight of them. She licked a wet stripe across a nipple, let Maggie take control of Nancy’s fingers and move them fast and hard. She savoured the broken-sounding noise Maggie made when she arched and trembled, and then sagged back against the crates, pulling Nancy with her.

“Nance, what about you?” Margaret asked eventually, still gasping for breath. Her hand moved down to Nancy’s thigh, but Nancy caught it and pulled the fingers to her lips. They smelt of Maggie still, a sweet, rich slickness, like melted butter. She brushed a kiss against the tips and placed the hand against her chest, above her pounding heart. 

“I’m fine.”

Maggie frowned, but was smart enough even then to ask no questions. Instead, she leaned over, breathed softly against Nancy’s mouth and kissed her, softly, chaste, comfortable. “So that’s what all the fuss is about, then, is it?” She smiled against Nancy’s lips. “Well. Thank you.”

Nancy grinned. “My pleasure.”

And it was, oh, it was.

***

The nine tails move lazily against her chest and stomach, a tangle of dry-skinned snakes. They’ve softened, over the years, cured in the blood of strangers. She knows the location of each knot in them, well placed to cause small hard bursts of extra pain. She’s watched them split skin, and flick droplets of blood through the air. She’s known the tight hard arc of fierce pleasure inside herself, seeing the bound men flail in pain, begging her to stop, begging her to go on.

The grip fits perfectly inside her palm. It’s hard and smooth, warmed by her skin, and it fits perfectly against her quim as well. She bites her lip, and lifts her hips, her hand cupped tight between her thighs.

***

The second time they kissed, it was the night of their escape, less than a year later: two girls, drunk and desperate, without a penny but what they’d sewn into their stays, and without a prospect but what they’d promised one another. Pressed against a grimy wall in a dark alley, they stopped to catch their breath, holding still together until they were convinced no one had followed them. Then they looked at each other. Nancy grinned and cocked a brow, and Margaret burst out laughing, that raucous, lovely laugh. She rolled over to press against Nancy and hide her mouth against Nancy’s neck, lest she be overheard.

“We did it,” she gasped, her breath warm and triumphant on Nancy’s skin. “Fuck me, _we really did it!_ ”

Nancy took her by the chin, tipped up her head and smiled and said, “We did – _if_ you can keep quiet long enough so they won’t catch us, you mad cunt.”

In the grimy lantern light of a passing link boy, Maggie’s grin was a brief flash of teeth and a whiff of gin – the mouthful of courage she’d swallowed, just before their mad dash from Golden Square – and then her lips pressed warmly against Nancy’s, and her hands settled softly on Nancy’s hips.

***

She rolls onto her stomach, clenching the whip between her thighs. Even by herself, she has no great interest in spreading her legs, but there’s a hard, sweet ache of pleasure in the clench of her thighs around the smooth leather, the controlled roll of her hips. She holds the leather grip steady, letting her quim do the work. Rubbing just the top of it against the slick leather, she moves, eyes closed, and watches Maggie smile in the space behind her eyes. Maggie knows not to touch. She watches instead, a slight flush in her cheeks. Her glorious breasts heave just a little harder than usual, brimming over the tight edge of her corset. There is the hint, just barely, of a dark pink nipple trying to escape. She watches Nancy, licking her lips a little, and when she smiles and says, throatily, “Come on, then, darling,” Nancy convulses with a long groan, pressing her thighs together as the sweet pain rolls over and through her, leaving her boneless and alone.

***

That night, they rented a cheap room close to the river front, the rich ripe stink of the Thames in their nostrils and the taste of victory in their mouths. No gin this time, but a cup of heated cider, bought with their own money and triumphantly passed between them.

They took off their clothes because god knew when they’d have a chance to wash them next, and huddled under the grimy sheet for warmth. By the light of their one candle, Margaret somehow still glowed like a goddess in them stupid ancient Greek stories Lydia was always arranging the girls into. Persephone, perhaps, unobserved in her garden, free and lovely before the advent of Hades. Alongside her, Nancy was long and bony, so much of her already marked beyond repair. But Maggie was grinning at her by candlelight, rubbing their cold feet together, and Nancy didn’t feel ugly then, or lesser. She felt like an amazon, a warrior, emerging victorious from a long war, and her scars were the story of the battles she’d fought and won on behalf of the both of them.

When Margaret ran her hand through Nancy’s hair, her eyes and lips so close, Nancy wondered, for a brief moment, whether they would fuck again. The thought made her tense up. Desire coiled uneasily in her gut, but she was old enough to know she didn’t want to start that way. Dimly, a resolve had already formed in her, firming with every pounding step away from Golden Square, that she was done with that for a good long while, if not forever; that she didn’t want anyone touching her that way again, not even Maggie.

But Maggie only smiled at her and kept softly stroking her hair, and when she moved closer, it was companionable, only to share warmth. She put an arm around Nancy and her face against Nancy’s shoulder. Slowly, Nancy let herself relax, settling into the warmth, the gentle caress on her hair, the soft weight of Maggie’s curves, the feeling of being held without demands.

“We did it, Nance,” she heard Maggie whisper to her, close on the edge of sleep. “We’re free.”

***

Alone in her room, undone but not undressed, Nancy closes her eyes, moves her head sideways on the pillow, and lets the tears run free. Her mouth is dry with the remembrance of the kiss they shared today, between grimy gaol walls: chaste and bittersweet, their third kiss, and the last.

“You’re free,” she whispers, near voicelessly, and wishes that she could believe it, or feel less devastated, less like one half of her had been ripped away. They were always meant to escape together.


End file.
